


Over Exposure

by SadieYuki



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Tarsus IV, non-graphic mention of torture aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8153758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieYuki/pseuds/SadieYuki
Summary: Jim would much rather deal with an army of assassins wielding pine nuts over having to weather the storm caused by this single video.





	

**Author's Note:**

> From [the-little-red-queen](http://the-little-red-queen.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _Maybe Jim hasn’t told anybody that he was on Tarsus, and the crew finds out because somebody hacks Starfleet and sends the entire ship a video of a young Jim Kirk freshly rescued who absolutely beats the snot out of two doctors who are less than gentle with one of his kids before going back to comfort them, face going from completely blank to crushed with how much he loves these poor kids._

_“Sickbay to Bridge.”_

“Go ahead, Bones,” Jim answered promptly, beating Uhura to the punch. He’d been signing reports for three hours straight and he’d almost welcome a full allergy panel of hyposprays to escape from it. Almost.

“Just because you’re bored with your job doesn’t mean you get to mooch off mine,” Uhura jibed good-naturedly.

Jim’s attempt at a retort was cut off by Bones’s reply, _“You need to get to Sickbay. Now.”_

Bones sounded stern, like Jim had been avoiding his physical for a week (which for once was not an issue, he’d actually showed up for his physical on time last month, thank you very much), but for the life of him Jim couldn’t think of any appointment he may have missed.

_“Jim.”_

Jim paused at his tone; Bones didn’t sound stern, he realized, he sounded concerned.

“On my way,” Jim said, cutting the connection even as he stood. “Mr. Spock, you have the conn.”

“You can’t start doing McCoy’s job either,” Uhura called. Jim saw the jab for what it was: solidarity masked with their usual banter. She must have recognized the concern in Bones’s voice too.

“Not to worry, Lieutenant,” Jim said, approaching the turbolift. “I don’t have a medical degree.”

“You don’t have a xenolinguistics...” Uhura’s retort died on her lips as she remembered his educational background, and Jim grinned in triumph.

“Ah, but I do! Ha!” Jim winked as the lift doors closed on his view of a scowling Uhura. He hadn’t exactly done much with his xenolinguistics degree, but it had been worth fitting in the final degree requirements just for that moment.

The walk to Sickbay was uneventful, but Jim couldn’t help but notice extended stares from some of the crew. While it wasn’t uncommon for new crewmen to stop at attention as he passed (they were quickly clued in that Jim much preferred that they continue their work rather than stop everything just because he was passing through), some of the looks came from people who’d been on board since the Narada Incident. Jim couldn’t think of any reason for the increased attention—Janice usually kept him up-to-date on relevant ship-wide gossip—so he continued on his way with a slight frown, not wanting to delay Bones with his curiosity.

As Jim arrived in Sickbay, he scanned the immediate area for Bones but only found a couple occupied beds and nursing staff attending to them. He noticed an ensign that had been sent down from the Bridge only a few minutes prior getting a minor burn treated from a short-circuited panel. Jim watched as she animatedly told a story to the nurse, free hand waving around in emphasis while trying to keep the other still for the nurse to work on.

“Jim.”

Jim took his attention away from the ensign and focused on Bones, who stood outside his office with Dr. M’Benga. M’Benga said something to Bones then turned and gave Jim a short nod before leaving for his own office. Bones jerked his head towards his opened door in invitation and Jim felt his nerves crackle with trepidation at the serious air of the room.

“You’re not gonna like this,” Bones said as the door shut behind them.

“Great opening, Bones,” Jim said wryly, finding himself instinctively reverting to humor in response to Bones’s visible tension. “Really doing a great job of keeping the nerves down. I’m not at all worried about this conversation now.”

Rather than respond to the bait, Bones heaved a deep sigh and leaned against the wall with crossed arms. “You’re probably gonna get a brief from the brass any minute now, but if you’re gonna hear it from anyone, it should be me. The Starfleet Medical servers were hacked last night, 2300 SFL, but they didn’t uncover what data had actually been accessed until a couple hours ago.” If Jim had been expecting Bones to say anything, it certainly wasn’t that. Bones continued on despite the visible shock on Jim’s face, “Thousands of fleet personnel medical records were exposed, and while they already caught the person responsible, they had already sold some high profile records to the highest bidder.”

Bones didn’t have to say it; Jim knew he was one of those high profile records. It also went without saying what kind of damage could be done with that information. Medical records had everything that you didn’t want enemies to have; mental health issues, prior injuries that could be targeted in a fight, medications, allergies…

“So the scum of the Federation and any of our enemies have access to my complete allergy profile and now know a thousand ways to kill me. That’s comforting,” Jim said dryly, already steeling himself for the increased awareness he’d need to have now.

“Allergies aren’t actually what I’m concerned about,” Bones said gravely. “I don’t wanna know how Starfleet recovered all the textual files already, but they did before any damage could be done in that regard.”

“So what’s the issue then?”

“What they couldn’t take back were things that have already starting circulating on open web, which were a few videos courtesy of several tabloid agencies.”

Videos weren’t so bad, Jim decided. He knew all of his Academy physicals had been recorded, as well as some PT exercises and physical exams like some Survival and Tactical classes, and then there were also the videos of his psych evals for Starfleet, but by that point he’d gotten really good at passing those with minimal concerns. With any of the physical videos, Jim figured people just wanted the eye candy, and if anyone thought they were gonna get anything useful from his psych evals, they were as misguided as the evaluators had been themselves.

“How many of my videos circulated?” Jim asked, wondering why Bones was getting so worked up over this. It was hardly the disaster he was making it out to be.

“Just one, but...” Bones paused, almost wincing before adding, “Jim, it’s not a good one.”

It was like a punch to the gut; Jim found himself leaning against Bones’s desk, needing the support. He hadn’t even considered his Tarsus files as part of the breach; they were so deeply encrypted that it’d taken special permission for even Bones as his CMO to have access to the files, even after Jim had told him. Hell, all of the videos were so tightly wrapped in bureaucracy that _Jim_ would probably have trouble accessing them; not that he had any desire to view them. They were all from after he and his kids had been rescued and were of his treatment and recovery.

And it wasn’t pretty. At best, he had been silent, despondent, and wholly unresponsive. At worst, he’d been downright feral, especially when he thought the medical staff had been mistreating his kids. Now he knew they had just been doing their job, but every time one of his kids whimpered from an antiseptic being applied, his protective instincts had gone into overdrive, more often than not resulting in him getting physical with the staff. And it was all on video.

Jim throat felt tight, “All of those files should be classified—”

“They are, but do you really think encrypted files are safe when these guys hacked the server itself?” Bones shook his head with a sigh. “They knew what they were doing—”

“Which one?”

Rather than answer, Bones held up a PADD, which already had a video queued and ready to play. Bones knew enough not to hit the button, but Jim could tell from the freeze frame exactly what video it was.

He remembered the incident vividly; one of his kids, Savi, had held onto a doll of hers (she had called it Ruzzy) for the entire seven weeks they’d been on the run from Kodos’s men. She held it with the same arm she’d scraped at one point, a wound that had become infected over time. The doctors working on her had simply wanted to treat the wound, but they made a mistake in that they tried to take Ruzzy away from her, and she’d wailed her objection.

Hearing her scream had made Jim see red, and he’d attacked the doctors thinking they were hurting her (and he probably would’ve let them have it anyway considering they were trying to take away Savi’s singular comfort item); a team of medical staff eventually had to sedate him to stop his attack. But it wasn’t just Savi and Jim in the video, all of the kids had been treated in the same room...

“I’m gonna murder them.”

“Jim—”

“No! That’s not just my face their exposing, those are my kids!” Jim seethed, a familiar protective instinct rearing its head. “Their records are sealed for a reason, Bones, and because of some asshole trying to get a quick buck at my expense, their lives are at risk!”

“Jim!”

“What?” Jim snapped.

Bones looked wholly apologetic as he said, “A link to this video was circulated as a marketing campaign for _Federation Buzz.”_

Jim paled. “That spam machine that somehow gets through secure mailboxes all the fucking time?”

“That’d be the one.”

Jim remembered the odd looks he’d gotten from some of the crew on his way down to Sickbay, and he knew the answer even as he asked, “Is it..?”

“If it hasn’t already gotten into crew mailboxes, it will soon,” Bones said, and Jim let out an exhausted breath. This was a nightmare. “I know Starfleet is working on spillage containment and recall—” Jim snorted in derision but Bones pressed on, “but it might be a while before all the breaches are deleted. You’ll probably hear more on that than I did when you get briefed.”

The silence that followed hung heavy in the room. Jim might’ve prefered having to deal with an army of assassins wielding pine nuts over dealing with the video leak.

“When’d you get all this info?”

“I found out about the Medical hack this morning; Geoff and I spent the last few hours upgrading the encryption on crew personnel files, but the fallout stuff only came through a couple minutes before I called you, hence why I think you’ll hear a brief soon.”

Jim chewed his lip, trying to work through the possible fallout from the leak. This would be the first time their faces would be revealed as children, and it wouldn’t be hard to put together that the video showed the Tarsus Nine. But Jim knew how his kids had aged, and a physical comparison wouldn’t cut it on its own. As long as there weren’t any names associated with the file— 

“I’m the only one named, right?”

“Well, you’re not ever named in the video, but it was attached to your file—”

“But none of the other kids were identified?” Jim persisted.

“No, just you.”

Jim let out a short sigh of relief. They all looked so emaciated at that time that it was difficult to connect the kids with their adult selves. Even Jim with his easily distinguished blue eyes would’ve been difficult to identify; of course anyone who had seen his scars would know right away, even without the video label. Luckily that pool of people was small, and he figured he could trust those few.

There wasn’t much to be done about it now other than prepare to weather the storm, and prevent further spread of the video until Starfleet completed its cleanup effort. First, he needed to address the crew, and second, he needed to make a request of one of those few people...

* * *

“Kirk has a degree in xenolinguistics?” Sulu asked as the turbolift doors closed.

Nyota sighed, turning back to her post. “Yeah, he got it before entering Starfleet. He had to take humanities credits anyways so he just decided to tag on the extra classes to get the degree.” She remembered just how Kirk had relayed this information to her; he’d shown up for the Xenolinguistics club one day, insisting that he wanted to ‘polish his tongue techniques.’ She’d told him he could only stay if he was already fluent in a xenolanguage, thinking it’d be an easy way to kick him out of the club before he could get his paws on it, but he’d surprised her by formally requesting membership in Andorian.

She’d later learned he was fluent in Orion when she walked in on him and Gaila and she’d tried to say some disparaging comments about him to her free-spirited roommate; Gaila hadn’t seemed surprised when he responded, and she later revealed—much to Nyota’s consternation—that Kirk sometimes spoke in Orion to her in bed.

Later, Kirk revealed to her just why he put so much effort into learning xenolinguistics, and she honestly thought the effort was sweet. He’d said he was trying to honor a past teacher of his by continuing to engage in her love of language.

“Do you zink ze Keptin is alright?” Chekov asked.

“He’s probably fine, it’s McCoy that didn’t sound so great,” Sulu said, leaning back in his seat.

“Yes, but,” Chekov paused, “well, zere was zat wideo dis morning—”

“What video?” Sulu asked. “Did Kirk make a sex tape and no one told me—?”

“If the Captain _had_ made a ‘sex tape,’ then the discussion of such would hardly be appropriate for the Bridge,” Spock’s voice cut through their musing. Nyota suppressed a smile.

“A sex tape would have been better zan zis,” Chekov said solemnly, and Nyota’s good mood abruptly fell. She knew exactly what video Chekov was referring to even if she hadn’t watched it herself.

She’d seen the email in her inbox that morning and deleted it the moment she saw the freeze frame. She didn’t need to read the label to know the video was of Kirk; the wounds on his back identified him well enough. She remembered the day she saw his scars, though at the time she was more preoccupied with getting him out of the room and her astonishment over his knowledge of Orion.

Of course, that didn’t stop her from catching a glimpse of the video in the Officers’ Mess that morning; some lieutenant from engineering had it playing on their PADD. The snarling face she saw on screen should never be on a thirteen year old.

“Did you see the video?” a voice near the tactical station asked.

“Yeah, the one from the _Buzz?”_

“D’you think the Captain knows about it?”

“About the video or the leak?”

“He’s _in_ the video, he obviously knows about that—”

“I’d say I’ve never seen him that out of control, but d’you remember what he did on Zelat III when Ensign Yvern was attacked?”

“I heard about it, Bruden said he was almost feral—”

“It’s too bad they don’t say where it’s from, I mean seriously, how’d Kirk get beat to hell like that in the first place?”

“Are you _serious?_ The article even mentions it—”

“Dude, you _read_ the _Buzz?_ You can’t believe all that bullshit—”

“The article just pointed it out, but one of the doctors in the video even mentions it—”

“Mentions what?”

“Kirk and those kids were on Tarsus IV!”

Chatter swept across the Bridge, and Nyota knew that if Spock had seen the video himself he would’ve put an end to this by now, but she could tell that he looked reluctantly curious at the discussion.

Hell, now _she_ was morbidly curious. She knew those scars had to come from something dramatic, but before the video she’d assumed it was from a reckless stunt he’d pulled on his bike. The video showed otherwise, but knowing it was from _Tarsus IV_ of all things just made it all the worse.

She had only been ten years old when the events of Tarsus IV hit the news cycle, and while she mostly associated the event with recent Federation history rather than something with personal attachment, she did know that her hero, Hoshi Sato, had been amongst the massacred colonists.

Nyota had the sudden thought that maybe Sato was the teacher Kirk was trying to honor.

“Kirk couldn’t’ve been older than thirteen, fuck,” Sulu swore.

“I wonder who the kids were, he was awfully protective of them—”

“Didn’t you count? There were eight other kids, I’d bet you anything those are the Nine—”

_“Attention crew, this is the Captain.”_

Kirk’s voice put an abrupt end to the noise on the Bridge, and Nyota breathed a sigh of relief. She had a feeling Kirk was about to put this issue to bed once and for all.

_“As you may have heard, there is a Starfleet leaked video circulating, one that is considered Top Secret, and I expect the professionals on board to delete this should it end up in your inbox, **without viewing it**. I’d like to remind everyone that opening and viewing any classified document without proper authorization, regardless of medium or source, is illegal and anyone found doing so will be punished in accordance with Starfleet and Federation criminal standards.”_

Nyota’s gaze swept the Bridge with grim satisfaction as all of the gossips immediately paled at the declaration.

_“I’d also like to remind everyone that the use of all professional and private devices on board the Enterprise is subject to monitoring at all times, and if you really thought that wouldn’t be looked into then I severely doubt the intelligence that supposedly earned you a spot aboard this vessel. Lenience **may** be given to anyone who may have forgotten themselves prior to this broadcast, but rest assured anyone found to have disregarded this warning will be punished to the fullest extent possible. Kirk out.” ___

__Nyota knew Kirk well enough that he’d extend the courtesy to anyone who had viewed the video ahead of time, but he clearly wanted to instill some sense of culpability in the offenders, and if the guilty squirming around the Bridge was any indication, he’d succeeded tremendously. Nyota also knew that he wouldn’t hold back against anyone who didn’t heed his warning._ _

___“Kirk to Uhura.” Speak of the devil._ _ _

__Nyota made sure she had her comm routed through her earpiece then answered his call, “Yes, Captain?”_ _

___“I need you to put a block on all outgoing signals from the Enterprise for the next half hour. Any signal that attempts to be broadcast will be routed to you for your approval. I trust you know what I’m trying to accomplish with that?”_ _ _

__Kirk was planning on proactively removing all the offending video files rather than wait for Starfleet to handle it, and he wanted to prevent the further spread of them in the meantime. “Aye, Sir,” she said promptly, fingers already moving across her panels._ _

__There was no doubt in her mind that Kirk would ensure every stray video file would be deleted by the time those thirty minutes were up._ _


End file.
